


Hot and Cold

by Spiria



Category: Tales of Phantasia
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 01:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiria/pseuds/Spiria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[OVA] Dhaos' hand is hot against her cold skin, and Mint wonders if he'll burn her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hot and Cold

**Author's Note:**

> For Endless, who provided the prompt: Dhaos and Mint, diverging paths. In a sense, I took "diverging paths" as the separation of their paths despite their same efforts to maintain the tree. It's also been months since I saw the animation, so if I butchered a detail, there you go.

When Dhaos placed his hand over hers, it was unbearably warm. Mint would have recoiled if he didn’t have her pinned to the spot, for she was cold in contrast and her body prickled with pain; yet it was only a fraction of the agony the tree endured, she told herself, and so she laid her lame sense of self-preservation to rest. As Cress’ drowned cries from a distance dimly pierced her throbbing ears, she felt Dhaos’ hand pressing deeper into the tree, taking hers with his.

The tree was wrecked with sobs that none would hear, and the sheer agony it emanated in droves threatened to crush her heart. Not a minute ago, it might have—she had been alone, having pressed herself against the dying tree without a moment’s thought for herself, and the price of offering her own energy had been indescribable. She had cried with it, pleaded it to survive, all while she shared in its pain and grew immensely sick inside. Her skin had quickly turned pallor, and not a droplet of sweat glistened on the cold, drying surface; she was sapped of life, but hers was nothing next to the withering tree. The realization had sealed the rest of the threat.

Then Dhaos had come, and he had joined his hand with hers. There was little intimacy behind the gesture, his purpose being to reach the tree, but the motion revived her nonetheless. His hand was hot, and the heat woke her; he was frightening, and the intimidation alerted her; his heart was kind, and the purity sobered her. In the midst of their painstaking union to bleed themselves into the tree, Mint saw Dhaos. He was distant, but warm and caring, like a father.

She didn’t understand when Cress charged in with reckless abandon, and she sat numbly when he rebounded off of the barrier erected around the tree’s perimeter. Dhaos only had pure intentions—an admirable purpose next to that of all the rest in the world that had left the lonely tree to rot. And the sad touch of the circumstance made her want to weep, want to cling to the warm hand that protected her and the tree, though she was too weak to do either.

She had neither the energy still, nor the mood, to do either when all ended bittersweetly and Dhaos vanished, when Cress and Arche came to her side for support that felt so cold and dead, and when she looked at the husk of the tree she had loved so. And Mint wondered then if Dhaos had loved the tree with as much childish innocence as she had when the rest had abused it.

That day, he had changed before her very eyes, and Mint resolved to understand the unadulterated love he bore. It was a love she had been too fatigued to touch at the time she’d seen it, and she wanted to explore it, to understand it, to cry for it—to uncover what sadness he hid and embrace him with the warmth he’d given her.

It seemed only appropriate to hold the cold and worn hand of his corpse when all was done and over with; but Mint did not cry for his pitiful fate.


End file.
